The blue wall of silence has been pierced,
at least in New York City. So says the media that covered the
trial of Officer Justin Volpe, accused of sodomizing a suspect
in custody. Fellow officers have stepped forward in court to
testify to Volpe's alleged inhuman acts.

But who built that wall? And how?

The cops didn't. We did.

And, sensational cases such as the New York
episode aside, that wall will remain impenetrable until we look
at how we built it, and how we can truly tear it down.

We built it by asking police to do the impossible.
In consort with pandering politicians and police chiefs, we have
unleashed cops as an occupying force in a war on citizens. They
can't do their jobs well, or safely, that way.

I'm hardly making excuses for Justin Volpe,
who has now decided to plead guilty, or for the three white officers
in Connecticut who have killed unarmed black citizens during
the past two years. I'm hardly making excuses for officers who
watch their brothers in blue brutalize citizens in defiance of
law, and clam up about it.

But look at how we've sent cops onto the streets
in the modern age. Increasingly communities throughout the country­­not
just big cities, but small cities­­have formed SWAT teams,
cops dressed up as soldiers to bust down doors and fly into housing
projects in search of drugs. We've armed them more heavily than
ever. We've taken the original concept of community policing­­leaving
the cop cars to get to know people on the street­­and
deformed it into a pretext for spying on and harassing people
whose looks we distrust. We have identified drugs and drug-users
as enemies in war, locking them up as though we can lock up a
health problem and social problem that courses through the arteries
of every stratum of our body politic. We even lock up the violently
mentally ill in jails instead of steering them to mental hospitals.

These "get-tough" measures play
well at the polls. They don't cut crime, especially not in the
long run. Instead they dump social problems in the laps of cops
trained to shoot, not heal; trained to arrest, not to find places
people in trouble can go for help before causing bigger trouble.

Let me give you an example of how we built
this wall: I saw it when I was New Haven's police chief a few
years back.

I was speaking at a neighborhood meeting about
constitutional rights. A man raised his hand and interrupted
me in front of a hundred of his neighbors and numerous public
officials.

"Chief," he said. "We don't
care about constitutional rights. Take them in the back room
and shoot them. We'll support you."

My answer was, "Today we'll shoot them.
Tomorrow we'll come back for you. You don't want your police
in that role of being judge and executioner."

Despite the occasional frustrations of some
of our citizens, we want well-trained police officers, not military
troops, in our streets.

Instead of training and hyper-arming soldiers,
we can prepare our officers for a job they can do­­a
job that will truly make our communities safer for all.

They can train to deal with all sorts of people,
not just people who think or look like them. They can be put
on street patrol for longer periods of time, go into schools,
meet the kids, the merchants, the hangers-out. They can work
alongside teachers, guidance counselors, clinicians, probation
officers, to keep tabs on potential trouble. They can gain the
trust of people in the community, rather than their fear. They
can become family police officers, the way we have family doctors
or teachers.

Then officers can feel safer, less prone to
react violently. Policing has become a hostile job. We've created
that environment. Calling off the drug war, training cops differently,
changing their beats to the street, linking them up with caregivers
and professionals in the community­­if we want to dismantle
blue walls, that's where to start.